Until now, the maker scene has not entirely taken off in Germany. denkwerk is one of the first agencies in Germany to establish a hardware-focused experimental lab in order to proactively promote this topic. Teye is the result of an experimental project of our “thinx” lab that we started to attract new talents and high potentials interested in hardware design. To demonstrate our approach we made the design and development process public, including all sources and documentations.

We decided to take a new approach to a connected everyday item – the telephone – and create a low-barrier, emotional user interface. The result is Teye – a likable two device VoIP “telephone” that works in the most natural way. It is designed to focus on functionality. No buttons. No screens. And no commands to control it.

The project was carried out from April to September 2014 (with interruptions). The core team consisted of a software engineer, two product designers and a creative director. The final result was released to the open source community in September 2014.

The project has always been defined as experimental approach to recruit new talents. However, coming up with a valid and functional concept has been important for us. We see Teye as a first version that could be taken further together with the open-source community.

Our focus was on the design process and experimentation rather than on complex technology. The main challenge proved to be the steering and calibration of Teye’s eyes and the optimization of the interaction of all hardware components with the available CPU performance. At the same time, we wanted to keep the design of the outer body reduced and appealing. The event-driven software uses state patterns. It is based on open-source libraries for language recognition and hardware steering enhanced by personal developments e.g. for the detection of emotions in conversations. All knowledge gained during implementation has been shared with the community.

Teye has been financed internally and has not received external funding.

Initiated as a recruitment project, we were delighted by the interest Teye generated. We received several inquiries about where to buy Teye and checked options for manufacturing and distribution but decided to keep Teye as an open-source project. We will be happy to support any intentions to further develop Teye.

Teye is an experimental concept but we believe it has several aspects that might inspire or influence traditional manufacturers of telephones.

Our initial goal – to gain visibility and credibility in the maker scene and to recruit new talents – has been achieved.